Author: RubberWorld

Sumitomo Rubber North America, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd., announces that Sam Williams has been named National Sales Manager (West) for Commercial Truck tires.

Williams has spent more than 30 years working in the automotive aftermarket industry, with experience in sales, store management, multi-unit management, business development, marketing, operations, buying, merchandising, strategic planning, and vendor relations. Williams has been with SRNA since 2016, most recently working as a Senior Strategic Account Manager.

Freudenberg Sealing Technologies has now entered into a new purchase agreement for seals with the Swiss medical technology specialist Ypsomed that significantly exceeds the previous order volume. This successful sales performance underlines the high expertise of Freudenberg Sealing Technologies in the medical technology field.

For its new E-Class, Mercedes-Benz is again counting on Continental’s original equipment expertise and factory-fitting the vehicle with EcoContact 6 Q tires. This tire model was developed for exceptionally energy-efficient driving with optimized noise levels. It delivers a range of benefits including a long service life and low energy consumption. To see the E-Class through the cold season, Mercedes-Benz has also approved Continental WinterContact TS 860 S tires.

Kraton Corporation has completed a $35 million investment to upgrade its crude tall oil (CTO) biorefinery towers in its Panama City, Florida manufacturing facility. The new infrastructure was completed in November with the highest safety and quality standards, for continued service to customers.

Cooper Standard formally announces its partnership with NIKE, Inc., including a new expansion of its technology licensing agreement. Based on the initial long-term agreement reached in 2021 to license Cooper Standard’s Fortrex™ material platform for footwear applications, the new agreement provides NIKE with limited exclusivity to use the Fortrex material for footwear and allows them to develop new applications for use in additional product lines.

The novel method of chemical recycling, published in Cell Reports Physical Sciences, uses enzymes typically found in biological laundry detergents to ‘depolymerise’ – or break down – landfill-bound bioplastics. Rapidly converting the items into soluble fragments within just 24 hours, the process achieves full degradation of the bioplastic polylactic acid (PLA). The approach is 84 times faster than the 12-week-long industrial composting process used for recycling bioplastic materials.

Bridgestone Americas (Bridgestone) announced it has teamed up with top Canadian Superbike Championship riders Ben Young and Trevor Daley to form Team BATTLAX, which will debut at the 82nd running of the Daytona 200 March 7-9, 2024, at Daytona International Speedway. Team BATTLAX will compete on a pair of identical custom Suzuki Canada GSX-R750 builds featuring Bridgestone BATTLAX race tires.

Augsburger has been with SRNA for 11 years, holding various account manager positions for both consumer and commercial truck tires in Canada and the United States. Prior to her time with SRNA, she earned her undergraduate degree and Master of Organizational Management at Bluffton University, completing a dissertation on Leadership in Multinational Organizations.

Enviro’s CEO, Thomas Sörensson, will represent Enviro and participate at the business seminar Sweden-France Business Forum: Accelerating Europe’s competitiveness, which is scheduled for January 31 in conjunction with the French state visit. The conference focuses on innovation and sustainability and among the participants are H.M. King, French President Emmanuel Macron, government representatives, and over 200 business representatives from Sweden and France.

The EU watchdog said products related to the inspections were new replacement tires for passenger cars, vans, trucks and buses sold in the European Economic Area comprising EU countries, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

It said the raided companies may have breached EU rules against cartels.